To start out I love GIS. It was a love of mine for years before Chemistry took over my imagination. Five years ago we were able to use handheld GPS to map week infestations in Judith Basin County and map those on arcview. Super fun useful activity. Every time I turn kids loose on Google Earth they just love it. "it is so cool" one of my summer school kids said recently. The number of teachable moments are huge when these kids get ahold of such a powerful tool!
Some cool google Earth stuff:
Google Earth Education Community
making measurements in google earth:
Position: The latitude and longitude of the mouse pointer are shown in the status bar near the bottom of the screen. An option in the Preferences dialog box allows you to change whether position is displayed in degrees-minutes-seconds format or decimal degrees.
Elevation: The elevation of the mouse pointer is also listed at the bottom of the screen. The "eye alt" value is the elevation of your viewpoint. An option in the Preferences dialog box allows you to change whether elevation is displayed in feet or meters.
Distances: Google Earth allows you to measure the great circle distance from one point to another or along a path (through several points), Distances are measured as the crow flies, without taking topography into account (as far as I can tell). The measurement icon appears as a ruler at the top of the window.
Some Google Earth resources:
http://bbs.keyhole.com
http://images.google.com - A quick way to search for maps or images to overlay
http://www.lat-long.com - A search engine to find locations of geological and other features in the US.
http://www.mindat.org - A search engine for names and resources in mines. Use with lat-long.com
Use Google Earth and Celestia in conjunction with the Powers of Ten video. You can reproduce the first half of this excellent movie with these two great programs.
More ideas:
I have found using google earth as a great way to introduce a new case study by zooming in via google earth to show the study area, and get their attention
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Thanks for these terrific ideas for using Google Earth. It also sounds like you don't have any problem using it as a resource in your classroom. What age groups are you typically working with? Would you recommend Google Earth as a summer course in itself? Do you feel that you could teach it?
ReplyDeleteHaving used the hand held GIS for coral reef surveys, and finding the coral reef overlay on Google Earth, I can definately start to see some of the benefits. It would be interesting to ask students to incorporate information from Google Earth into a research project...
seventeen year olds are google earth sponges... I did teach a year long class on GIS. I kind of ran out of stuff by the end, but maybe by now, it has been four years
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